I am undecided. My MVP ballot is sitting in my inbox, still blank. Of course, it is always blank with three days left in the season, because the NBA allows me to wait until all 82 games are played before making up my mind with finality. But what’s different this year is that I truly do not know who I will be putting in the first slot and who I will be putting in the second. This is the toughest MVP race I
The weather app on my smartphone read 39 degrees this morning. It left me wondering: When is this going to change? This is the second straight year in New York that spring has been a rumor rather than a reality, and it can lead a person to convince oneself: This will never change. Which brings me to my mindset on the MVP award. For months, I have been telling myself that James Harden is going to win the MVP award. Every night,
Back in the preseason, I predicted the San Antonio Spurs would be returning to the NBA Finals, where they would defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers for that elusive second straight championship. Nothing I have seen over the past month and a half has convinced me that my prediction was faulty, and San Antonio’s demolition of the Golden State Warriors over the weekend only reinforced my belief in the Spurs. If you give a read to Chris Bernucca’s column on Kawhi Leonard and
Adam Silver has been commissioner of the NBA for 14 months now. He has been forceful on one issue — the lifetime suspension of Donald Sterling, which led to the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to billionaire Steve Ballmer. It is time for Silver to stand a stand again, and this time it has to do with reformatting the playoffs. I wrote an open letter to Silver about this very issue less than a month ago, and it is certain to
Did I get you with that headline? This final regular-season edition of my MVP rankings is actually being published April 2 as we head into the final two weeks of the regular season. Procrastination being one of my fortes, it allows me 14 consecutive nights of sofa time to flip around on League Pass and determine, among other things, whether Cablevision is directing enough bandwidth to my neighborhood to have the League Pass games actually come on the screen. When you
First place in the Southwest Division changed hands again last night as the Memphis Grizzlies snapped a three-game slide by defeating the Sacramento Kings while the Houston Rockets lost to the Toronto Raptors. So Memphis is back on top, but with only a half-game lead over Houston. The winner of the division is likely to get the No. 2 seed in the playoffs, and that means a matchup with the No. 7 seed. And although nobody can say with any degree of
The MVP debate is a great one this season, and as I mentioned in my most recent edition of my MVP rankings: This is one season when things could truly go down to the wire. As in Game No. 82. But what about the other end of the spectrum? Who have been the Least Valuable Players? The guys you may never have heard of, or guys whose weaknesses are well-chronicled but particularly acute this season. Those players’ lack of production should not
Steve Nash has retired as a player, and the Internet has been flooded in recent days about the point guard’s glorious past. I am here today to tell you a 15-year-old story that no one else has told, and give you an idea of where Nash hopes to be in five years when he turns 46. Ideally, it’ll be on the gold medal podium at the Tokyo Olympics as the executive director of Team Canada. [Read more…]